This blog entry contains the PowerPoint presentation I gave at the HIME Symposium Investigating the Future of Medicine Webcast on March 16, 2013. The presentation is more graphical and less technical than the one in the previous blog entry Multifactorial Hormesis – the theory and practice of maintaining health and longevity and goes much further in explaining the universal nature of hormesis. Links to the presentation follow a revised abstract for it:
Abstract: Multifactorial Hormesis II
Hormesis is about how biological systems respond to stress in a nonlinear fashion. In a certain “hormetic” range of dosage of virtually any stress, a biological system responds by more than accommodating the stress, e.g. by putting itself into a more-healthy and protected state than it would be without the stress. While a stress dosage greater than in the hormetic range can damage a biological system, many kinds of health-producing biological impacts can be induced by applying stress in the hormetic range. Although hormesis has been long-known, its universal nature and vast practical importance is only now becoming appreciated. Hormesis exists on various levels of biology from the sub-cellular to the social functioning of organisms in their environments. It affects virtually all body systems and major subsystems, and it operates through multiple molecular pathways. Extremely important applications of hormesis have long been practiced, but such applications have been mainly seen and studied each as separate matters. So, the ubiquitous nature of hormesis and its general properties and potentials have remained largely unexplored. Further, hormesis is required by the systems nature of biological processes and is essential for the evolution of species and survival of individual organisms. This presentation reviews the history of hormesis research, some familiar examples of hormesis, hormesis and aging, key molecular pathways that mediate hormesis, our emerging understanding of general properties of hormesis, hormesis and dietary substances, hormesis and systems dynamics, and the possibilities of developing new hormetic therapies and preventative interventions for diseases and for countering aging. A few simple personal health-producing practices that involve hormesis are also mentioned.
Because of its size, I had to break the presentation up into two pieces. Click on a link to download a Part. It will open in PowerPoint in your computer. The presentations are most easily read using the slide show presentation option.
Part 1: Multifactorial Hormesis slide show
Part 2: Multifactorial Hormesis slide show